• Cycle safety and rail fares high on Labour manifesto agenda
• Government has 'failed to sell benefits of HS2'
• Less than a fifth of UK railway stations have step-free access

Labour shadow transport minister Mary Creagh says the public are looking for a culture change in the run up to the 2015 general election. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Martin Argles/Guardian

Six weeks into her job as shadow transport minister, Mary Creagh talked to the Public Leaders Network and set out Labour's biggest priorities for transport in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

Creagh is scathing of the government's spending on infrastructure and maintenance. She said there had been a lot of stop-start funding during this parliament,and that although there is a huge road maintenance budget for 2015 to 2020, the time to have done road building was when the economy was flatlining and 130,000 jobs were lost in the construction sector.

"Those people could have been kept on, and infrastructure and maintenance could have been done over the last three years," she said. "We always said the government had cut too far too fast and a lot of that is being played out now in the degradation of our roads infrastructure."

The UK is ranked 28th on infrastructure by the World Economic Forum. "That's a bad place to be," said Creagh. "Our country's crying out for infrastructure spending."

Creagh, who cycled from London to Brighton for the Labour Party conference in September for charity,wants to see cyclists take their rightful place on safer roads. "Getting a cycle safety audit into the mainstream of transport planning is very high on our agenda for the next manifesto so that cyclists and pedestrians are not added in as afterthoughts but planned in from the start," she said.

Airport capacity review 'a classic example of fudging the issue'

That Sir Howard Davies is publishing his review of aviation after the general election in 2015 is "a classic example of fudging the issue", said Creagh. "Where will aviation be in two or three years time? I don't know. Will there be less noisy planes? Quite possibly. Will there be more sustainable airplane fuels? Possibly, even probably. We need to look and see where this commission lands."

She also sees big opportunities for the next parliament to adapt to climate change and make rail and road networks more resilient. During the floods in 2012 "we saw the whole of Devon and Cornwall cut off by train for about four days, which has a huge economic impact on the region," she said. "We don't want our railways to be used as flood barriers and I'm afraid they are down in the South West."

'We're seeing people in rail poverty'

Average rail fares will go up 4.1% in January and the government has limited train operators to increasing individual fares by an extra 2% above inflation, rather than the current 5%. In recent years there have been above inflation rises of up to 9% for some routes. "What we're seeing is people in rail poverty," said Creagh. "People are being priced out of work or unable to move to a bigger house further away from where they are commuting to, because the price of a season ticket negates the cheaper housing." She said a Labour government would cap rail fares to retail price plus 1%.

Although Labour MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of HS2 in the paving bill on October 31, Creagh is critical of the government's handling of the project. She said: "HS2 was Labour's brain child and what we've had under this government over the last three years has been strategic reviews, delays, high court reviews, judicial reviews and an increase in the bill of £10bn. The government has singularly failed to sell the benefits to people." Creagh, who is MP for Wakefield, points out that many people do not realise high speed trains can go onto normal tracks and that, in principle, there should not be a reduction in current services when HS2 comes to fruition. "Some of those arguments were made in Strategic Case published a few weeks ago but very very late on," she said.

Creagh has previously refused to rule out renationalisation of UK railways, and said the franchising model has led to a fragmented network which consumers find difficult to navigate. Labour opposed the refranchising of the East coast mainline, and Creagh said that by pursuing "the franchise model at all costs" the government's political orthodoxy is holding back the UK. "I think it's extraordinary that the government is allowing the German, French and Dutch states to come in and bid for that railway franchise. It's got no objection to state ownership of our railways as long as it's not UK state ownership."

Wider transport issues

Creagh is keen to focus on wider transport issues, such as accessibility. She recently asked a parliamentary question about the number of stations that are fully accessible and found that less than a fifth (452 of 2,533) have step-free access via lifts or ramps. "It's a disgrace," she said. "How come no one ever talks about that? Everyone wants to talk about the big structural things. No-one ever talks about whether mums with their babies and their shopping or people in wheelchairs can get around."

Creagh said bus regulation is "a broken model that we need to fix". Fares have increased while passenger numbers are down and routes are drying up, she added. Labour supports the introduction of quality contracts, which allow local authorities to take control of profits private bus operators make from fares and re-invest a greater proportion of them in local services.

Challenge of being a woman in politics

Creagh took up the role of shadow transport minister on 7 October 2013, in a straight swap with Maria Eagle, now at the Department for Food and Rural Affairs. Though measures such as Labour's women-only shortlists are helping address the gender balance in Westminster, Creagh thinks it's sometimes challenging being a woman in politics – balancing a family and travelling between two homes.

"A lot of people are put off politics because they see prime minister's questions (PMQs) and they see a very heady and febrile atmosphere, quite an aggressive atmosphere," she said, but adds PMQs is "rowdy, it's feisty, sometimes predictable, occasionally surprising, sometimes stunning. It's the crucible of our parliamentary democracy."

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